


go back to yesterday

by Anonymous



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Mando Acquisition, Accidental Baby Yoda Acquisition, Age Regression/De-Aging, Bounty Hunter Cara Dune, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Din Djarin, ManDadlorian, Self-Indulgent, Young Din Djarin, actually its more like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:36:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27579926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After a freak accident while collecting a bounty with Cara, Din finds himself in the body of his younger self with no idea how to go back.
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Din Djarin, Din Djarin & Cara Dune
Comments: 11
Kudos: 154
Collections: Anonymous





	go back to yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Note: this first chapter was written and posted before Season 2 Episode 4's release. If you're from the future and something sounds off, then that's the reason.
> 
> Also, I'm only assuming after Chapter 8, Cara goes into bounty hunting.
> 
> Enjoy!

Here's the thing, when Cara got a hold of him and asked him if he could join her on a bounty mission, Din knew something was bound to go wrong. Whether it came from the group of space burglars that comprised of her contract, or if it came from the small green child swaddled to his back with a makeshift sling, hidden from sight underneath his cape. 

Something will go wrong. 

He took the job anyway. She was offering half the bounty reward, and he was low on fuel and spending money. 

Maybe it was his own cockiness as well; the knowledge that if he and Cara teamed up there was quite literally nothing they couldn't handle. They fought legendary Imp machinery together, they've survived an army of Troopers of all kinds, and they will survive this. 

A small band of robbers floating along the worst, most ignored sections of the Outer Rim, taking down ships as they risk passage and gather whatever is left that's in any way shape or form _valuable_ will hardly make the tiniest scratch in his beskar. 

Turns out, he's wrong, as he most often seems to be these days. Well, not wrong in the way one would expect. His armor isn't scratched, and the child remains happily cooing behind his neck throughout even the worst of the fighting, and the bandits clearly don't know how to really fight when push comes to shove. Or when Mandalorian and former Rebellion Shock Trooper go all out when normally the victims of these bandits included weak refugees just _risking_ trying to get to somewhere safer…

No, what goes wrong isn't anything particularly dramatic. 

What goes wrong is that he gets hit by a lucky shot right on his chest plate. Normally, a blaster beam to that section of armor would do nothing more than make him stumble. However, he immediately feels an intense feeling similar to electricity sink through his beskar and across his chest to each of his extremities. As the electricity turns to pain, and pain into _agony_ , he does what he can and yanks the sling from off his chest—causing the child to fall with a yelp—before his vision blacks out and all he's aware of is the shutters of torture striking though each and every single one of his nerves. 

For a horrifying second, he thinks of those tales he's heard whispered among his tribe; tales of powerful weapons meant to target Mandalorian beskar and use the metal to incinerate the wearer to a pile of ash. Terror overcomes him in a violent wave, making a brutal harmony with each wave of suffering—that is _not_ how he would like to die, especially in front of his small foundling. 

However, that second quickly passes, because soon he loses track of his body and his thoughts and everything that makes him _him_. He loses it all to the snapping of bones and the tugging of skin and the cramping and seizing of muscles that by the time it stops…

… he's sure it's because he's dead. 

In fact, he's honestly quite surprised when comes back to his senses with a gasp, his eyes flying open and his limbs weakly twitching. He feels like he's suffocating with the weight of a thousand Blurrgs stacked on top of him, and he can't see a thing. However, the proof that he's alive comes from a three pointed hand prodding at his back accompanied by scared _oohing_. There's a familiar feminine voice as well, calling for him.

"Mando?!" A woman—Cara, that's Cara—shouts, but she sounds far away and muffled. 

He tries to answer but all that comes out is a weak groan between his teeth. He can't move. Something heavy is wrapped all around him and his very bones feel as brittle as twigs left out in the middle of the harshest desert planet. 

"What did you do to him?!" Cara demands, no longer speaking to him. The child, Din realizes, continues to prod at his back with worried little chirps. His heart aches at the noises. 

"I don't know!" Another voice answers. One Din doesn't, in fact, recognize. The bandit begins to shakily rush to explain that they took the gun off from a ship carrying a family of rat-like scavengers. 

Cara shouts something, but Din no longer bothers to try and follow the conversation. He's not sure what's happened, but what he _is_ sure of is that the kid is getting more and more distressed the longer he lays here. He needs to get up and reassure the kid; he needs to get up and make sure he's not as dead as he feels. 

He curls his fingers and forces the muscles in his arms and back to move. It takes longer than what he's comfortable with, his efforts make his entire body ache and strain in ways he's not sure he's felt in a very long time. Even compared to that time the E-WEB blew up in his face. 

Thankfully, he eventually manages to work himself up so he's sitting. His head is practically made of soft cotton at this point—though he does find that the reason he can't see a thing is because his helmet is sitting entirely all wrong on top of his head. 

Panic swells in his gut at the realization. He brings his hands—of which feel like they’ve been stuffed into big, fingerless mittens—to his skull to check if his face is exposed in any way, but then he finds the bottom of the helmet hangs further below his jaw than what it normally does. Then, he finds that the horizontal part of his T-visor is located below his eyes, perhaps near the tip of his nose. 

He's so utterly perplexed that he almost doesn't notice Cara settling down in front of him until her hands wrap around his wrists and tug his arms away from his helmet. 

"Mando?" She asks again, her voice strangely shaken. "Mother of moons… mando can you hear me?"

"Yes…" he replies, and then immediately stills. 

His voice… it doesn't sound like his. 

His perplexity only heightens as he watches Cara release a heavy exhale and let go of his hands through the too low angle of his visor. 

"Okay, so you know who I am," she says, not making anything easier to understand. "That's good. Okay… so I'm gonna leave you here to… come to terms… just sit here while I get the bounty on the _Crest_ , alright?"

Din opens his mouth to argue, or perhaps just demand her to go and make things make sense, but then Cara mumbles a small _hold_ _this_ and stuffs the child into his arms. 

Immediately, Din is distracted from his own confusion to look over his kid. 

His one weakness is the kid after all—and damn her, Cara knows that. 

The child _coos_ , his giant fuzzy ears folded back against his head to show his own confusion and agitation. It tugs at Din's heartstrings—and even though his hands just barely manage to fit inside the fingers of his gloves, he holds tighter onto the child and pulls him closer to his chest. 

Six, stubby little fingers reach towards his helmet and tiny little claws scratch against the beskar. His helmet is knocked off whatever balance it had, and soon he's blinking once again at the darkness of his helmet. 

"No," he says, his voice once again sounding oh so very wrong. He gets the feeling it doesn't sound wrong simply because his helmet doesn't want to fit correctly. He gets the feeling it's more because his body practically swims in his clothes, like he has been stuffed in armor meant for a Hutt. He clears his throat, however when he speaks it doesn't sound any better. "No. Don't touch, little one."

He uses one hand to quickly fix his helmet, and then he returns to holding his child with both hands like he's his anchor. 

The child tilts his head and blinks with wide eyes, a frown tugging at his lips. He seems to calm down a little at least, dropping his hands to simply babble in an attempt to communicate. It's more than what Din can say at least, with every passing second he becomes more and more aware of his body. More and more aware of his heart beginning to race in total panic and disbelief. 

"Alright," Cara's voice returns, and Din looks up to find her staring down at him. "You're gonna have to show me how to use that carbon freezer. I knocked the target out. Can you walk?"

Din looks down at his body and frowns as his helmet wobbles dangerously. While he doesn't exactly feel as weak and in pain as he was a minute ago, the beskar on his limbs are still heavy beyond belief, and his feet don't even fit in his boots. 

He doesn't think he'll be able to walk very much at all. 

Thankfully, or perhaps embarrassingly, Cara seems to come to the same conclusion as himself without him having to say anything. Before he can protest, however, she bends forward and scoops him up under his legs and the small of his back. He releases a yelp and holds tightly to the child with one arm and then drapes his other around Cara's neck tightly. 

He's always known Cara could lift him if she really had to—beskar and all. She's a woman of almost unbelievable strength. However, the ease of how she carries him down the halls of the bandit's now trashed ship towards where he parked the _Razor Crest_ only solidifies his impossible situation and heightens his ever increasing embarrassment.

He's no longer in the body of an adult. 

He's just trying to figure out if he simply shrunk… or if he's somehow in the body of a child once again.

He's not sure what one he would prefer. 

"Do you have the weapon that did this?" He asks. 

Cara nods. "And the guy who shot you, who also happens to be the target. Which is why you need to show me how to carbon freeze him, he doesn't know how the weapon works." Din can proactively hear her roll her eyes. "Didn't even know what it would do to you."

"Freeway bandits don't usually know what they're taking," Din says as he tries to turn his head to fix his helmet once again. His face is pressed against her shoulder; with each step she takes the rocking motion of her stride blinds him. "If it looks like it can sell for a price, they'll take it. The only smart bandits in the galaxy are the Jawa."

The child's ears twitch at the what must be a very familiar name by now. Honestly, the amount of times he's ran into the Jawa so far this month alone is ridiculous. 

Because running into the Jawa normally coincided with Tatooine, and no one likes to go to Tatooine. 

But alas, the only mechanic he trusts to actually fix his ship lives there.

Cara turns a corner and Din immediately recognizes this as the hallway where he's connected the _Razor Crest_ to the bandit ship a little over an hour ago. 

Soon enough, Cara sets Din down inside the ship and grabs the bounty—who's worth more alive—by the shoulders and shoves him into the carbon freezer at Din's direction. Thankfully, Cara doesn't need much instruction on how to fly the _Crest_ —so soon enough, he finds himself left inside the hull of his craft with nothing to do but rip off the bandages and see the full extent of his newest problem. 

He takes off the gloves first and sets them off to the side; the kid _dahs_ at the gloves and curiously prods at them. Din ignores the child's curiosity, knowing there's not much damage that can be done to his gauntlets even if the kid did more than poke. 

With his hands free, it's easier to work off the rest of the heavy beskar. He tries not to pay attention to how little his own fingers are—he's sure each digit is thinner than the _child's_ —as he carefully sets each piece of armor off to the side along with his boots and pants. There's no point in wearing all of his clothes when his shirt alone falls around his legs like robes. 

Now that he's completely free of the worst of the weight, Din takes a deep breath and stands up. The child looks up from the armor to him with his head tilting in wise interest. Like he knows Din is going to do something significant. 

Din takes off his helmet, confident that Cara will respect his privacy and remain in the cockpit, and holds the helmet in his too little hands. 

He looks into the glistening metal and frowns at the reflection staring back at him. 

It's his face alright, but one that's at _least_ two decades younger than what he should be. 

The child babbles and Din looks up from his helmet, forcing a smile on his face as the child waddles towards him and grabs onto the hem of his shirt. What a strange turn of perspective this is. The kid's ears almost reach above his knees when before he barely stood taller than his boots. 

Din sets the helmet to the side and lifts the child. He's heavier than what Din expects, no longer as light as a feather compared to the strength of his arms. He holds the child out in front of him anyway and allows the kid to run his hands over his face while babbling in some sort of an unknown attempt at conversation. 

"It's still me, womp rat," Din says, staring into the big eyes of the child. "I know it's strange."

More babbling, more fingers prodding at his face, and Din would allow it to continue and let his foundling re-explore his face for so much longer if it wasn't for how his arms are starting to burn and tremble. 

How old is Din's body right now? He can't be older than his double digits. 

He sets the child down and rubs his arms through the fabric of his shirt. The child coos like he always does and reaches up like he wants to be picked back up, but Din shakes his head. 

"Not now," he says, picking back up his helmet and putting it back on his head. "We need to fix this."

He walks on shaky legs towards where Cara has told him she set the weapon earlier. It's humiliating how high he needs to get onto his tiptoes just to reach into the counter along the sides of the hull. With encouraging chirps behind him, he does eventually manage to hook his fingers along the grooves of the weapon. 

And it's a good thing the child cannot talk, because that means there's technically no witnesses to him almost dropping the blaster shaped weapon because it ends up heavier than what he's expecting, like most things. He does manage to capture it in his arms, but he loses balance and falls to his rear end on the cold floor. 

The child giggles. The traitor. 

Din decides that while he's already sitting with the weapon in his arms, he might as well just study it here. With the steady rumbling of the ship's engines, that's exactly what he does. 

It looks like any old blaster, however it's certainly bigger than a handheld one. This one clearly needs two hands to handle and most likely has a kick powerful enough for those hands to be necessary. There's a magazine near the trigger, and when he pulls it out he finds a single bullet waiting there. He checks the barrel for another possible round, but doesn't find anything. At this point, the child has climbed into his lap and is reaching towards the buttons and controls of the weapon with similar assistive nature as whenever he tries to help Din fly the _Razor Crest_. 

Din pockets the bullet then slams the magazine back into it's chamber before the child can put any loose bits into his mouth. 

Time passes by rather uselessly after than. Any markings on the weapon isn't in any language he knows, and the array of flashing buttons and dials don't do a single thing when he begins to mess with them. The child is starting to look frustrated that Din gets to press buttons at random and he doesn't. 

Din sets the weapon down with a sigh, keeping a hand on the child's stomach so he doesn't run forward to mess with it. He's not exactly sure what he hoped to accomplish looking at the weapon. He's no weapons expert. He knows the weapons he's been trained in. Nothing more, nothing less. 

Everything else? He figures out on the fly much like his little charge who’s little arms are waving at the abandoned blaster.

He releases a second sigh and then stands up. They should be reaching Nevarro any second now. It's better to figure things out in familiar settings compared to the cold veins of space. 

And they'll figure this out. 

They have to, because Din has no kriffing idea what he'll do otherwise.

**Author's Note:**

> so im going to be frank, im not an expert on star wars. ive watched the first six movies when i was a kid but never got into it. though, because i was bored, i decided to watch the mandalorian for the heck of it a few days ago and now im attatched. im trying to study star wars lore, mostly because of the recent episode 3 plot twist with the death watch and everything, so hopefully this all make sense within the universe. 
> 
> if you would like me to write more, i would really appreciate comments! let me know if you have any requests for baby!din as i am famously flying at the seat of my on fire pants for plot.
> 
> thanks for reading!


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